Google disables offensive ad keywords found by BuzzFeed

Reuters Staff

2 Min Read

FILE PHOTO - The Google app logo is seen on a smartphone in this picture illustration taken September 15, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration

(Reuters) - Alphabet Inc’s (GOOGL.O) Google said it had disabled a “majority” of the offensive keywords that BuzzFeed found could be used by advertisers to target people searching for racist and anti-Semitic topics.

Google, the world's biggest advertising platform, not only allowed advertisers to target searches such as "Why do Jews ruin everything" but also suggested the user to run ads next to searches such as "the evil jew" and "jewish control of banks", a campaign by BuzzFeed discovered. (bzfd.it/2x2HX4H)

The ads were visible when such keywords were searched for and Google’s ad buying platform tracked the ad views, according to the internet media company’s report based on the campaign.

Google disabled the keyword searches used in the campaign after BuzzFeed’s inquiry, except an exact match for “blacks destroy everything”, the report said.

“We’ve already turned off these suggestions and any ads that made it through, and will work harder to stop this from happening again,” Google’s senior vice president of ads Sridhar Ramaswamy said in an email.

The news comes a day after Facebook Inc (FB.O) said it was temporarily disabling the ability of advertisers to target based on people’s self-reported education and job information after a report that those features allowed targeting based on anti-Semitic topics.